Hello everyone. I just registered on this forum and this is my first post, so thanks for reading! This might get a little long.
I'm nearer 60 than 50, and I've been involved with church music and sound on a volunteer level for most of my adult life. Recently (a few months ago) I began attending a new church, and when people found out I had some sound experience, it wasn't long before I was asked to help out.
Here is some background. This church used to have a full contemporary rock band worship style. Sadly, about 12 years ago they went through a massive split and lost 3/4 of their members. Those who remained were mostly older folks who preferred a traditional sound, and no one had any idea what to do with the sound system. They have been limping along for all this time and "sound system" is almost a curse word due to all the frustration. The volunteers who ran sound had one job - mute and unmute channels as needed - and were not allowed to touch any other controls except volume. When problems occurred, the default was to unplug things until it stopped...and then of course no one remembered how to put it back.
I jumped in and have started inventorying the equipment, untangling wires, and making small improvements. The room is a traditional deep, high and narrow sanctuary with stained glass windows, with the sound board in the balcony way in the back. The amp rack is in an adjacent room. All the system cabling is run through the walls and under the floor, emerging all bundled together, painted the color of the wall, and mostly unlabelled. On a typical Sunday there's an acoustic guitar with an amp, electric bass and amp, a grand piano and a choir - none of which were running through the sound system. There's also a pipe organ. In the system, there are 2 Shure wireless lavalier mics in use for the pastor and prayer leader, 2 or 3 AT PRO37 vocal mics for lead singers and an AT PRO46QL omni condenser on the podium for announcements.
Now, here is what is powered up each Sunday for those 5 or 6 mics:
A Mackie 328 board with a meter bridge
(4) Symetrix 425 compressors - only one channel actually being used
(2) dbx 266XL compressors - not plugged into anything
(3) Rane FPE-13 Parametric EQs
(1) Sabine PowerQ ADF-4000 - not sure how it's configured
(1) Crown Com-tech 800 amp. One channel is driving a 70v distributed system of Fourjay 8CT427 in-ceiling speakers in the overflow room (but is incorrectly set for 8/4 ohm operation). The other channel is driving a Frazier CAT46 center speaker flown over the stage, and is intermittently malfunctioning.
(1) Crown Com-tech 800 amp driving two more CAT46's flown for fills about halfway down the sanctuary and at the back pointing at the balcony. Both of these speakers are running off a Peavey IDL-1000 on different delay settings. Both of these CAT46's have blown HF drivers.
(1) Crown Com-tech 400 amp driving two Peavey 115-TF FOH speakers, one on each channel. One channel was set for 8/4 ohm and the other for for 70v operation. (!)
(1) EV CPS 2.4 amp with a Rane ME-15 GEQ in front of it driving two monitor channels, but with no speakers plugged into them
(1) EV CPS 2.9 amp driving two EAW BV-150 subwoofers coming off a Rane FAC-24 crossover.
The Mackie is set up in a weird way, such that panning a channel R sends it to the FOH Peaveys, and panning L sends it to the three Fraziers. This makes it hard to use any of the subgroups. It also has after-fader solos, which I don't like.
I took a couple days off work and am going to the church tomorrow to spend some time tracing cables. I did manage to get the guitar and bass into the mix this morning and it sounded better. I also swapped the PRO37s out for some SM57s I found in the storage room, which to my ears was also an improvement. And I re-aimed the FOH speakers, which were angled in so far they were crossing right in front of the stage and causing feedback issues.
This is an old system. The board had literally not been dusted off for years. I'm planning to go through a few cans of Deoxit on cable connections
This could be fun
I could also ruffle some feathers if I move too fast.
Eventually I am going to be making some recommendations to the music committee re: repair/replace/getting a whole new system. Right now I'm trying to figure out what we have and how it can be best used. I think with a little TLC, even this old dinosaur can sound a lot better than it has for quite some time.
If you got this far, thanks for reading my novel
I suppose I should justify it by asking a couple of initial questions, so...
Has anyone done the jumper mod on a Mackie 328 to change to pre-fader solos? Any pitfalls to be aware of?
Could running one of the FOH speakers off an amp output set at 70v have damaged it?
Thanks!